stop all the clocks (put time on hold)
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: As Cedric dies, he remembers not every moment that ever led to him falling for Cho, but rather that one, deciding moment, where he realized she was the girl he wanted to spend his life with. For Amber.


**stop all the clocks (put time on hold)**

When you die, it's not your life that flashes before you but a single, pivotal moment. It's surprising, but not unwelcome – Cedric isn't sure he'd like to be reminded of how short and meaningless his life was as he dies anyway.

He'd much rather spend his last instants reflecting on something good honestly, not that he ever thought about this much.

Not that he ever imagined he wouldn't have the time to do more, to be more.

 _(he won't ever get to be the Champion now, to make his parents proud, to see Cho again, to hold her and celebrate, if not his victory at least the effort he made, together – he's not at peace with any of those, but he guesses it doesn't matter)_

 _(not now, not ever)_

And there, in the fraction of seconds before the acid green light hits him, he lets himself remember, a memory washing over him like a kaleidoscope of bright, vivid colored images of better times.

 **.x.**

The day he remembers is ordinary, a day like any other from earlier this year. He had been dating Cho for almost two months already – they had been to the Ball together – and everything about it was perfect.

Cedric can recall with the oddest clarity how he thought that it was weird for it to be so easy.

"Shouldn't there be like fights, or something?" He had asked his friends once after a few glasses at The Three Broomsticks.

They had laughed, loud and boisterous in the way boys with slightly too much alcohol in their veins can get, before clapping him on the back. "Plenty of time left for that, mate," they had said.

"Never heard of a man wanting to fight with his woman before," one of them mocked, beer sloshing all over the top of his glass as he waved it around.

"Shut up, Benny," Cedric elbowed him, a mock-glare on his face," you know that's not what I meant. It's just, to hear you guys talk, I didn't expect things to go so well…"

Something of what he was feeling must have shown on his face, because the boys cheered and jeered and clapped him on the back again. "Aww, little Ced's in love! Man, that's great for you," they all said at once.

 _(he had thanked the heat of the pub for hiding his blushing cheeks more than once that afternoon)_

They had finally calmed down after a little while, and returned to sipping their drinks. When they had left, Benny had slipped his arm over Cedric's shoulders, half in an attempt to walk somewhat straight to the carriages, half in a sort of sloppy one-armed hug.

"You know, if you really like that girl, you don't let go. You keep her happy, and you be nice to her, and Merlin, you love her like she's the second coming of Morgana herself, I don't even care man, you make-"

"Alright, I think I got the message," Cedric had interrupted him, laughing, and sure that what would be said next would only be crude detailing of what his friends thought he and Cho should get up to.

 _(not that they didn't, but well, that wasn't quite something Cedric was up to sharing details of)_

"I mean it, man," Benny had said, stopping, his tone solemn in the way only drunk people's voices could get, "if you love her you hold her tight and make sure she has no reason to leave your sorry ass behind."

He patted Cedric on the chest, and scrutinized his face. Finally, seeming to have found what he was looking for there, he unhooked his arm from its place on Cedric's shoulders, and stumbled his way toward the carriages, patting Cedric's shoulders one last time on his way out.

Cedric had thought of Cho then, of the way he had spent all morning with her and then ate lunch on the snow in a winter picnic he'd never have thought of by himself, circled by a fire that warmed but didn't burn and gave the white snow hues of sparkling blues like thousands of jewels had been scattered around them.

He had thought of the way she had encouraged him to spend the end of his day with his friends, told him to blow off some steam and come back to her later. She had winked then, and he had laughed, delighted.

 _(he had laughed a lot that day, he remembers)_

His friends had been calling him from the carriage they had requisitioned, their voices loud and cheerful, teenagers drunk on life and cheap alcohol, their minds flying so high above the ground nothing could ever make them come down, and he had thought of Cho, of the way she had said her favorite flowers were black irises, for the garden the grandmother she had never known had left behind, where she used to nap as a child.

 _("I like to think that their smell reminds me of her," she had told him one afternoon, twirling a blade of grass between her fingers, "but to tell the truth it mostly just reminds me of sunshine and days spent outside. Sometimes I miss it – the greenhouses don't have any, and I don't think they'd last in the kind of soil we have around here anyway.")_

It wouldn't take much, he knew then, to conjure those flowers every day and give them to her, so that she could see and smell the flowers she missed so every day.

He had known then, that he would spend every day by Cho's side if she let him.

 _(and maybe it's all about the same thing, in the end – either you remember a whole line of facts, a whole life of them in fact, all jumbled up together, moments important and unimportant, events meaningful and events meaningless, or you remember that one special moment they led up to, that one time you felt something special, something almost ethereal in its beauty, in the way it made you feel like you nothing would ever be able to reach you)_

 _(or maybe it's just the synapses in your brain, firing up all at once, trying to fight the inevitable one last time, and making you think something other than your incoming death is flashing before your eyes)_

 _(it's one theory – I know which one I prefer. Do you?)_


End file.
